Posted by MikeT23 on 9/14/2012 2:23:00 PM (view original):Players aren't paid the same at every level. Having 30 in rookie ball and 5 in LoA is not the same thing. An owner against the cap just can't promote 20 RL players.

And the roster minimum affects that how? If I don't have the money to make a move its going to be negated by the system because of budget concerns not because I've left too few players at the RL level.

BECAUSE YOU CAN'T MAKE ANY MOVES AT ALL UNTIL YOU FIGURE OUT HOW TO GET 20 IN LOA!!!!

WHAT PART OF THIS DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND?

I don't think that's true - you just can't move someone off the Low A roster unless it will still have 20. That's why I talk about promoting from the bottom up.

Hmmmm.....does it change once the season starts? I could have sworn I've gotten a "You cannot make a move as your LoA team does not have a full squad" or something like that.

FWIW, whether I'm mistaken or not(and I very well could be because the situation hasn't presented itself to me in years), it seems like having 9 at any level would need to be addressed anyway. That's crazy low.

Posted by kschoenberg on 9/14/2012 2:21:00 PM (view original):Al, what if the roster minimum wasn't in effect as long as the player was promoted or demoted from a team and not waived/released? So, if the total number of players in the organization didn't change the move would be allowed?

Still wouldn't stop someone from emptying out a level if they wanted to. Depending on how you manage your minors, minor league FA and retirements can easily leave you with few enough players in the organization at the start of the season to leave a level empty.

It would probably have to be something like filling up teams that aren't at the minimum by the deadline with try-out camp players so there's no actual cost savings in doing it and there would be no real incentive to not field a team at all at a level. But then you have to deal with what happens when you go to do that with someone who is already against the cap.

There are no Tryout Camp players/pitchers during the time period I'm talking about. I'm not exactly sure when that is populated but we're a day away from Rule 5 and the lists are empty.

In some cases there are not enough available players at some positions to fill out a roster unless you include signing Major Leaguers and then passing them through waivers to play at low level minor league slots. This is especially true at the C position, but players that would reasonably play SS, CF (at the minor league level) and pitchers with stamina over 60 also can be in very short supply.

Posted by kschoenberg on 9/14/2012 2:21:00 PM (view original):Al, what if the roster minimum wasn't in effect as long as the player was promoted or demoted from a team and not waived/released? So, if the total number of players in the organization didn't change the move would be allowed?

Still wouldn't stop someone from emptying out a level if they wanted to. Depending on how you manage your minors, minor league FA and retirements can easily leave you with few enough players in the organization at the start of the season to leave a level empty.

It would probably have to be something like filling up teams that aren't at the minimum by the deadline with try-out camp players so there's no actual cost savings in doing it and there would be no real incentive to not field a team at all at a level. But then you have to deal with what happens when you go to do that with someone who is already against the cap.

There are no Tryout Camp players/pitchers during the time period I'm talking about. I'm not exactly sure when that is populated but we're a day away from Rule 5 and the lists are empty.

In some cases there are not enough available players at some positions to fill out a roster unless you include signing Major Leaguers and then passing them through waivers to play at low level minor league slots. This is especially true at the C position, but players that would reasonably play SS, CF (at the minor league level) and pitchers with stamina over 60 also can be in very short supply.

My point was that the enforcement mechanicism would have to be something like the sim adding that quality of player to teams to fill them out at or shortly after the time when the limits come back on. They wouldn't have to literally be tryout camp players that you could sign before hand.

You can certainly wind up in positions to not have rosters filled out ideally - but you still have to pay players, and the games will still sim, which is the point of the limits.

Nine is a new low for me....but many times at the AAA and AA level I've found myself after rollover with around 15 and most of them pitchers. This is going to happen more often if you have a strong BL team and can't promote them...they hit FA or retire. Generally, I have enough players in my organization to fill all levels because the RL can be emptied. But if you have ~20 at Lo A and ~Hi A then the player shuffle just becomes painful. Because now you have to figure out what position you need to fill at AAA, then look at the whole organization to find the guy that can fill that spot. He may be at Hi A, but you can't finalize that move because now Hi A is below 20 so now you've got to look for a person to fill that spot...and let's say that player is at Lo-A but once again you can't finalize that move because now Lo-A is under 20 and if you don't have someone at RL to fill the slot you have to make a FA bid or waiver move and the whole thing has to sit until that player can be acquired. Now multiply that by needing to fill even 5 slots at AAA and another 5 at AA and you might end up with 25 pending transactions.

This makes the GM screen rosters basically unusable because while a player may be showing on the AA roster he may already be in one of the slew of transactions to be moved.

Obviously, some players in the game are so smart that they can just keep that all in their head or run separate programs to track it out of the interface.

No, it's not impossible...but many find it to be more difficult that it needs to be.

Perhaps the best thing to do is just to move your true prospects to the correct level and not worry about the rest. When the games start and the Tryout Camps are full you can just get players/arms from there and toss them in at whatever level. Sure...it makes the minor leagues a joke, but it's what the current system would allow...and since Mike asserts that 97%+ really don't care about the minors...why not?

I assume you're talking about AFTER you re-sign some of your minor league FA. I've taken teams with massive retirements and had single digits. But there are still plenty of minor league FA to bring back. If you have a full 40, you should have at least 15 in AAA.

Posted by kschoenberg on 9/14/2012 3:17:00 PM (view original):Nine is a new low for me....but many times at the AAA and AA level I've found myself after rollover with around 15 and most of them pitchers. This is going to happen more often if you have a strong BL team and can't promote them...they hit FA or retire. Generally, I have enough players in my organization to fill all levels because the RL can be emptied. But if you have ~20 at Lo A and ~Hi A then the player shuffle just becomes painful. Because now you have to figure out what position you need to fill at AAA, then look at the whole organization to find the guy that can fill that spot. He may be at Hi A, but you can't finalize that move because now Hi A is below 20 so now you've got to look for a person to fill that spot...and let's say that player is at Lo-A but once again you can't finalize that move because now Lo-A is under 20 and if you don't have someone at RL to fill the slot you have to make a FA bid or waiver move and the whole thing has to sit until that player can be acquired. Now multiply that by needing to fill even 5 slots at AAA and another 5 at AA and you might end up with 25 pending transactions.

This makes the GM screen rosters basically unusable because while a player may be showing on the AA roster he may already be in one of the slew of transactions to be moved.

Obviously, some players in the game are so smart that they can just keep that all in their head or run separate programs to track it out of the interface.

No, it's not impossible...but many find it to be more difficult that it needs to be.

Perhaps the best thing to do is just to move your true prospects to the correct level and not worry about the rest. When the games start and the Tryout Camps are full you can just get players/arms from there and toss them in at whatever level. Sure...it makes the minor leagues a joke, but it's what the current system would allow...and since Mike asserts that 97%+ really don't care about the minors...why not?

I'm not saying it can't be improved, but you're making it worse than it has to be by a) starting from the top and going down and b) not resigning some of those AAA guys who went to FA.

I've already said this but I'll say it again. Removing roster minimums will create more problems than it solves. You'll have owners who don't fill their minors and then you'll have minor league games not simming. WifS will have to intervene and that's usually not a good thing.

Many? I don't think so. Some of them do, but there's always going to be a good number of those FA ready to re-sign if they didn't retire. And guys on your 40 but in the minors typically take a hell of a long time to retire.

It's not a problem...in that anyone can move the players around. The current system just makes it more difficult.

Al, if you do it from the bottom up....let's say you start from the bottom up. Okay, so you look at Lo-A and you need to add 4 players so you look at your roster and find the 4 that you think will fit there, but what you're essentially doing is grading everyone in the organization because if you move the guy to Lo-A that means you've determined that there is someone better suited at Hi A, AA and AAA. Yes, you can then promote the guy again if needed to Hi A as you get to that level, but that leaves the spot open at Lo A and you have to do it all over again.

Once again...it's not impossible. it's just more difficult that it has to be.

I do a lot of minor league FA signings...both during the re-sign period and after, but as I stated earlier re-signing AAA and AA guys isn't always possible because players that are without a doubt non-BL material will still ask for way more than any sane owner would pay.

This season I had 11 players retire from my minors. Four were over the age of 28 the rest were under the age of 25.
I had 22 leave as FAs...Four were from my BL team and that was expected the rest were from my AAA and AA teams and while most of them had never played a game in the BLs they are all considered ML by WIS when you run the report and they appear in the ML FA list.

I'm on my first HBD team. The previous owner didn't promote anyone at the end of last season, so I had to do all this myself before locking in my budget.

Planned the important moves (true prospects) out on paper ahead of time.

Got into making the actual transactions and like the initial post here suggests, I had a few "oh ****" moments once I realized it wouldn't let me do everything I wanted to, all at once.

But I figured some things out. 1) How transactions work, so that I know how to do them painlessly now. 2) How to count my roster slots, and how important it is to keep track of my roster slots. 3) How it's actually difficult to truly F anything up, because the system makes me check what I'm doing before I do it. *** This is pretty important for a noob owner to know! ***

Once I figured out the give and take of it, I lived. All five teams took me about two hours. Pretty much the same effort as a fantasy football draft. And it'll be a lot faster next time.